Monday, 7 October 2013

day of the oprichnik [vladimir sorokin]

When in Red Square, you notice that there are still copious
quantities of Soviet stars adorning the walls and the turrets of buildings. The
presence of the symbol seems as ubiquitous now as it must have been in the Soviet
era. This is momentarily perplexing, until you learn that the Soviet Star has
now been adopted by the military as their symbol. Thereby converting at a
stroke what were multitudinous tributes to the Soviet state into multitudinous
tributes to the Russian army.

This semiotic facility helps to explain the deceptive
fluidity of Russian history, where one repressive system can be rapidly moulded
into another, using the same techniques, personnel and symbols. Sorokin’s
satirical novel, set in the future, engages with the way Russian political
structures engage in eternal recurrence. This dystopian Russia is still
repressive, still run by autocratic, corrupt apparatchiks. They are now
subservient to a king and his royal family, rather than a President. The novel
follows a day in the life of one of the elite ‘oprichniks’ as he gallivants
around Moscow and the country indulging in dubious moral practices and a life
of luxury. The contrast with Ivan Denisovich could not be much greater.

There’s nothing subtle about Sorokin’s writing. This is a
most Swiftian of authors. He addresses the same territory as Pelevin, without
the intellectual playfulness. Where reading Pelevin feels like participating in
a fencing match, reading Sorokin feels like taking part in a Greco-Roman
wrestling bout. It’s nasty, physical, sweaty and lacking any sense of emotional
involvement. At the same time, his writing is frequently gripping and always enjoyably warped.